Egyptian Top Ten Gallery
By Michael Wood
Last updated 2011-02-17
Hieratic script giving an account of a dream, on a ceramic fragment from Deir el-Medina ©
Deir el-Medina
Deir el-Medina
A hidden gem. This is the village of the people who worked to build the pyramids. It lies over on the West Bank of the Nile, tucked away in a little valley under the Western Cliffs, and the people who lived here built and decorated the royal and noble tombs.
Texts recorded on papyrus and on pottery fragments have given us wonderful detail about the lives of these 'ordinary' Egyptians - including even their love affairs. The tomb of one such worker, a man called Peshedu, has beautiful painted murals showing him and his wife in paradise, cultivating their fields in a scene that in every way replicates their life on earth.
The people built their tombs on rubble bases in mud brick, just as they do today, using straw to help bind the mud for the bricks, and then drying them in the sun.
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